I always look forward to Loretta Chase because there is something about her novels that is just entertaining, even when they get ridiculous. My favorite of hers is probably Mr. Impossible (it’s just the personality of Thor in Thor: Ragnarok meets The Mummy) though I also quite enjoy her Dressmakers series. Overall, I have enjoyed her Difficult Dukes series though this is the weakest of the 3. The first half of the book reads very much like a classic romance novel, and then the second half is more a series of short snippets to align with the other two books. From the earlier two books, we already know that Blackwood, one of the three difficult dukes, is married to Ripley’s sister, so this novel backtracks to cover their courtship and marriage in the first half, and then provides an explanation for why the previous two novels haven given the impression that Alice and Blackwood’s marriage is troubled/why she appears to be an absentee wife.
Since this one is forced to fit into the timeline, it ends up being a bit weird and superficial in the later part, less focused on the relationship per se. Also, when the novel started we learn that Alice is involved in a women’s charity group but something about the way it was all set up felt needlessly convoluted or confusing – I felt like I had missed something. Chase has been writing for a long time and something about the pacing in this one almost reminded me more of 90s historical romance than a modern day historical romance? Like if you had told me this was part of her Scoundrels series rather than something written in the past year, I would have believed it – just from how quickly the plot jumped from point to point, not in the way the male lead was written.
Even being the weakest in the series, it is still entertaining but the himbos aren’t quite as charming as in the previous novels. The other two novels in the series have also alluded to a past between Alice’s aunt, Lady Julia and Ashburn’s uncle, Lord Frederick, but unfortunately we didn’t get too much of them interacting in this novel, either, because I was definitely hoping for more of them as well. So definitely pick it up if you like Chase, but after finishing it, I mostly felt like I wanted more Chase and that maybe I should go re-read some of the books I mentioned earlier.